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Thursday, July 24, 2014

Sunday night, the Hungarian media learned that Péter Szentmihályi
Szabó, a former poet and right-wing political commentator, was going to
be the next ambassador to Rome. Eva S. Balogh, a Hungarian and former Yale lecturer in Eastern European history, was appalled. "One thing is sure," Balogh wrote: "Szentmihályi Szabó is an inveterate anti-Semite."

To prove her point, Balogh translated an essay of Szabó's from 2000. It's about Jews, and it's pretty appalling stuff:

I don't know, I don't understand why they hate us so much. They live
here in Hungary, they speak and write in Hungarian, but they loathe us. I
really don't understand why they stay if it is that bad here, in this
welcoming country that is so foolishly patient. It is not difficult to
recognize them because they are cowardly and impertinent at the same
time. Money is their God, their mother tongue in which they have trusted
from time immemorial. Dark circles under their eyes, flabby skin,
clammy palms, cold feet, freakish smiles give them away.
They can be found everywhere on the earth. They are the agents of
Satan. They arouse fear and they live off of fear. They create turmoil
and discord. They are constantly packing, yet they don't leave. Are they
foreign spirits whose mission is to destroy the local communities?
International criminals who, following Marx and Lenin, decided to
enslave mankind? Eternally homeless folk condemned to be constant
wanderers?
They are the debt collectors. The ones who first figured out that
money "works" without labor although there are no goods behind the
merchandise, only a piece of metal, a piece of paper, or by now only a
digital symbol on the computer. Everybody is afraid of them, yet they
dread those who fear them. The world's strongest army guards their
security, and yet they still don't dare to get close to those whose
rights they defend so loudly.

This is especially troubling given that it happened in Hungary, where
there has been a trend of anti-Semitism, particularly in right-wing
politics. Though right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orbán condemns
anti-Semitism, his government doesn't have the best track record on it.

The World Jewish Congress, writing about a 2013 Orbán address on
anti-Semitism, told Bloomberg that he failed to
"address any recent anti- Semitic or racist incidents in the country,
nor did he provide sufficient reassurance that a clear line has been
drawn between his government and the far-right fringe."